Fake Cuss Word

Gosh is for people who don't believe in heck. Who the frell do they think they are.
Frag, Smeg, Felgercarb, Blatherskite, Dadgum, Fnord, Smurf. I also knew a Mormon who used clever phonetic disguises to turn sinful expletives into squeaky-clean fun for the whole family. i.e. "Crystal Reports is such a piece of shiz. The way it interfaces with VB really kicks my trash." And sometimes I wonder if widely-accepted jargon words like cruft and mung apply. (and foobar)

FUBAR is an abbreviation for "F'd up beyond all recognition" so it's actually a disguised cuss word. And the son of SNAFU -- Situation Normal All Fouled Up, from GI's in Europe in World War II.

Often used in television shows to allow characters to appear to be swearing, while not upsetting the censors.

Harmless as they may appear, in conversation, they display the same uncomfortable emotions and probably aren't appropriate in job interviews, or formal design documentation. In code, however, they might make good dummy variable names. Especially in Perl. -- NickBensema

Absolutely. The point of them isn't to avoid offending. The point is to express anger and frustration, exactly as one would with a real curse, but distract oneself from doing so by expressing creativity at the same time. -- DanielKnapp
Sightings

To quote the late, great FlandersAndSwann: 

  Ma's out, Pa's out, let's talk rude,
	Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
  Dance in the garden in the nude
	Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
  Let's write rude words all down the street
  Stick out our tongues at the people we meet
  Let's have an intellectual treat,
	Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers.
Oh, you're such a mother lover

Get up on that mother-father!

Darn, Drat, Shucks
Oh, bleep! I always wonder how radio announcers catch callers in time IN the USA< almost all live radio/TV is really on a 5-7 seconds delay, allowing some poor sap whose job it is to monitor for obscenity to bleep out the disallowed words/ block the offending video. Not always successful, as the Feb 1, 2004 Superbowl Halftime show demonstrated

They can also be used as selling propositions--all the allure of the "industrial strength" versions; less social stigma:
PiersAnthony's MagicOfXanth? series includes a concept called Adult Conspiracy that basically prohibits children to know bad words, to see panties and to learn the secret of stork summoning, and this prohibition is enforced physically. The children work around it by saying "mice" (as a smaller variation of "rats") and "pooh".
NormanMailer?'s TheNakedAndTheDead? is a veritable fug fest. Legend has it that his use of "fug" got the book past the censors at various publishing houses.

The UK comedy show "A bit of Fry and Laurie" often used fake cuss words for comic effect - ones I recall are
My favourites are Sockcutter and Sheetslitter.

Also there was a band called Daft Kunz (pronounced as in the German)!

And in the RugRats? there is a "child expert" Professor Lipschitz!

Lipschitz is a real last name that quite a few people have. I don't think it qualifies as a fake cuss word.
On talk radio, an idiom seems to be emerging to substitute the F-word and the S-word by actually saying "eff" or "ess". For example, "that really is a piece of bull-ess" or "un-effing-believable." I've heard this on Loveline (Adam Carola and Doctor Drew) and I think Howard Stern.
In IT/geek circles, the word fsck is often used as as a swear word, however I've only seen it in the written form, not spoken, where it's pronounced eff-ess-check for file system check - an often time consuming yet essential, program that runs upon startup of a unix machine to check the disks are all OK.

I've heard folks say the word "fsck;" they pronounced it "eff-sick." -- BrentNewhall
Euphemism Generator: Replace voiced consonants/sounds with unvoiced, and vice versa. 
	B <--> P
	D <--> T
	G <--> K
	J <--> ch
	V <--> F
	Z <--> S
	zh <--> sh
Oh vug, what do you use for M and N? Cot tappid.
Our data-center flooded with sewage due to a clogged pipe and we want more euphemisms. List so far:

I taught some interns that RTFM was short for "Read The Famous Manual" and shortly got Email from KevinHagel saying that something was "Famoused".

I recall some research on the effectiveness of words that relieve stress -- lots of short hard syllables. And a conclusion that "Baden Powell" might be an effective swear word. But I have not been able to get away from greeting disaster with the traditional four letter ones.

I like and use the term "fastard" for a person who is driving too fast (from a book in England on advanced driving). Clearly a portmanteaux word.

RichardBotting
This very Wiki page (FakeCussWord) was mentioned at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003235.html . In it, the author recommends that someone add 'goram' from Firefly. Well, here it is. From what I could glean from the minimal context in the show, 'goram' was the futurized 'goddam' which is an abbreviation of...well... As in "The show was canceled six goram seasons too soon!" (RobMyers)

Some fake cuss words, such as "drat" and "Zounds" (short for "God rot" and "Zeus's Wounds") are so old they are ... cuss words. Including "bloody" according to some folk etymologists.

CategoryWhimsy
EditText of this page (last edited June 16, 2009)
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